Tuesday, October 08, 2013

What Has John Boehner's Ambition to do With the Shutdown ?

John Boehner, with Obama, is not seen as a
conservative ideologue, yet he is following the policy agenda of his most
ideological members

On a very simple level, the closing
of most of the American federal government can be pinned on the ambitions of one
man, Speaker of the House John Boehner. There is little doubt that Mr Boehner, a Republican, could, whenever he wants,
gather enough votes from moderate Republicans and most all Democrats to reopen
the government.

But conventional wisdom says the Republican caucus would swiftly dethrone Mr
Boehner. And, interestingly, conventional wisdom and punditry, in Washington at
least, doesn't blame Mr Boehner one bit for holding the government hostage to
his career aspirations. Thus is the cynicism of Washington today.

Why he is so committed to sticking with such a bruising job is another
question. His caucus is balkanized and unruly. This Congress is held in the
lowest public esteem since the invention of public opinion polls.

Once seen as a skilled dealmaker, Mr Boehner isn't able to make deals. Never
seen as an ideologue, he has now relinquished control of the Republican policy
agenda to the party's most ideological faction.

Newt Gingrich (left) led a government shutdown in the
1990s that eventually proved disastrous to Republicans

Where's the fun? To put the question another way: Why can't the leader of the
party in Congress control the party on the most important issues and votes?

The answers apply equally to Democrats and Republicans. A series of
self-inflicted errors by the two political parties over the past 40 years have
left party leaders with no whip and little power. After Vietnam and Watergate, there was a reform spirit that wanted to open
and democratize the process of selecting party candidates for office, as well as
get special-interest money out of politics.

The first part worked too well. Party candidates all came to be picked
through open primary elections. In the process, the parties lost the ability to
select loyal candidates in smoke-filled back rooms - they lost a source of power
and persuasion.

The campaign finance reforms, however, backfired entirely. The post-Richard
Nixon idea was to stop party bosses from doling out money from local moguls,
unions and corporations. Instead, the reforms deformed and opened the spigots
for money to flow directly to candidates from all the old sources, bypassing the
party machines. The quantities of money have grown to gargantuan
proportions.

By the 1980s, politicians were essentially free agents. They didn't need the
parties to get nominated or to fund campaigns. Pollsters, advertizing wizards
and fundraisers replaced the party bosses. And the party leaders in Congress
lost their leverage.

At the same time, computers and marketing data gave political professionals
new precision in drawing the map of congressional districts. Individual
districts have become much more homogenous - overwhelmingly Democratic or
Republican. It has never been easy to unseat an incumbent. But now, once
candidates of the dominant party in these districts get the
nomination, they are home free.

So members of the Congress, especially in the House, mostly have safe seats
and are immune from challenges by the other party. Their bigger challenges come
from within their own parties and that tends to drive them further right or
left. Voting patterns are as partisan now as at any time since the Civil
War.

All that means is the House is filled with increasingly ideological members who
aren't especially worried about re-election and are impervious to the party whip
and discipline. It is legislative chaos.

John Boehner carries an extra burden as a Republican. From 1949 to 1995, the Democrats controlled the House except for two years in
the 1950s. That is a long time to be in the political wilderness, with the
Republicans effectively shut out of governing and legislative power. They
developed a sort of frustrated minority party mentality, locked out of power and
able only to toss bombs, make mischief and obstruct.

So modern House Republicans have had little or no experience actually
sharing the responsibility of governing. Their minority mentality lingers. And
it shows. Republicans were led back to power in the House in 1995 by one of the most
mischievous, incendiary party leaders ever, Newt Gingrich. He led the way to a
government shutdown that year that was considered disastrous to Republicans.

But the Gingrich confrontation now seems far more rational than the Boehner
shutdown. And Mr Gingrich's Republicans were pushing for a broad set of coherent
conservative changes to the budget. There were realistic grounds for
negotiation.

Mr Boehner's Republicans are pushing to repeal a sitting president's hallmark
achievement a year after he was re-elected. There is no room for negotiation and
no chance of success. It is purely a stunt, an act of guerrilla
theater. They are throwing their weight around simply because they can and to hell with the consequences.

In effect a third party has formed in Congress to the right of the Republican
Party. This has forced Mr Boehner to operate more like the tolerant head of a
coalition government than an iron-fisted speaker of a past era, who could make
or break a politician's career at will.

Ironically, chances are high Mr Boehner will have to cave eventually and team
up with Democrats to avoid an economically irresponsible - and politically
lethal - default on government debt obligations.
That will probably save his job, but barely.

Dozens of Republican politicians, such as Steve King of Iowa, Tim Huelskamp
of Kansas, and Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina, have suggested in
interviews that the US government could prioritize its payments in the event
of a debt limit breach, choosing to fund some government expenses - while
drastically cutting others.

The strategy hinges on convincing President Barack Obama that conservatives
are willing to break the debt ceiling and devastate the Democratic Party's
government priorities, while assuring Republican big-business backers that this
would not destroy the economy.

It is a fine line, but conservative grass-roots groups think they have found
the silver bullet to kill Mr Obama's 2010 healthcare reform law, which
Republican Representative John Fleming of Louisiana called in typical remarks
"the most dangerous piece of legislation ever passed in Congress".
If the debt limit is breached so that "Obamacare" can be destroyed and
Americans be taught they can live with less government, so be it.

"Liberals might be so concerned about settling this issue because they do not
want Americans to realize that we can survive just fine with a lot less
government spending," Jeffrey Dorfman writes in
Forbes.
First-term Republican Representative Ted Yoho of Florida said in
an interview with the Washington Post that hitting the debt limit would
"bring stability to the world markets", as it would prove the country is serious
about balancing its budget.

"We hit the debt ceiling, and the world won't end," says Dean Clancy,
vice-president of public policy for FreedomWorks, a conservative grassroots
activism group.
"Once the public and Wall Street understand that default is not really a
possibility, the president's leverage will be greatly diminished and a
bipartisan compromise will be achievable."

Other Republicans counter that such a strategy is both impractical and
dangerous. Even if the treasury department could figure out how to prioritize
payments, the uncertainty created by such an action would devastate financial
markets.

"The issue here is honouring our debt obligations," says Bill Hoagland, a
senior vice-president at the Bipartisan Policy Center who served as a budget
aide to former Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. "It's stupid, and it's unbelievable we're even having this conversation."

Speaker of the House John Boehner, a reluctant recruit to the current budget
fight over healthcare reform, has shown hesitation to take the plunge with the
conservative caucus once more. Although he continues to assert that his party is united, there were reports
in
the media last week that he told nervous colleagues that he would not allow
a default on the debt - even if that meant relying on Democratic support to pass
a debt limit increase.

According to Republican campaign strategist and pollster Matthew Towery, the
hard-line conservatives will soon learn their plan is unworkable. As the debt limit approaches, what has been termed a Republican "civil war"
between hard-line conservatives and the party establishment may be approaching
its end game.

The conservative caucus has proven it is willing to continue to escalate the
standoff until it achieves unconditional victory. With strong backing from
voters at home and a view the "Obamacare" healthcare reform is an existential
threat to the country, compromise is not an option. At some point, however, the rest of the Republican Party may decide it is
ready to get off this ride.
"I think Republicans just want out of this mess altogether," Mr Towery
says.